Day 13 - On the mend?

I am very, very pleased at the moment. Which is a little strange, as my leg is quite sore. But the critically important thing is that it's not very sore and I've just run 3.25 miles! I stopped at 3.25mi as it was starting to hurt slightly more than it was before, and I really don't want this to get any worse, but it's really, really good news for me! I had a nice 0.75mi or so walk back to the office which stretched my legs a bit. I'm very happy at the moment!

I did do a fair bit of playing around beforehand. Last night, I gave my calf a pretty major massage - there were lots of knots that I wanted to get rid of. It hurt quite a bit afterwards (in a fairly normal post-massage way) but felt quite good this morning. I also went round to the chemist and bought another tube of 10% ibuprofen gel and slapped that all over the shin area where it hurts about 30 minutes before my run. And finally, I stuck some old dual-shock Sorbothane insoles into my running shoes in place of the standard ones in the shoes.

So, how did it go? When I got ready - 20 or 30 minutes after using the gel - my leg felt absolutely normal - no pain at all. Good start. The Sorbothane's made my shoes feel like platforms, but I quickly got used to them wandering around the office. Then I started running outside, and it hurt a fair amount almost immediately - at which point my heart sank and I thought that it'd probably get worse and I'd stop within half a mile.

But, after half a mile I was running up a hill, and again, things felt almost entirely normal. A slight discomfort in the leg, but no real pain. And it went on like that - if I had to quantify it then until the last half mile or so the pain level was around half that of yesterday (which was better than Sunday) - and even in the last half mile it was a bit more painful but not as bad as the end of yesterday's run. So it's still going in the right direction.

I need to keep taking things gently, but there might be hope here that I don't have to stop just yet. I'm not sure which bit of massage/ibuprofen/Sorbothane's worked so I'm going to do the next few runs exactly the same. If the pain level keeps dropping then I might stop each thing in turn and try to figure out what's helping, but I'm really hoping that I'm on the mend. If I keep it gentle and sensible, then I might get to the end of this month after all!

I was hoping this might happen - I generally have a good day on 13th, and today's proved that!